Examining coverage of news and sports using the rules of formal logic.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Protecting Our Second Amendment Rights

Republicans in Congress and the states, in particular Indiana, have pushed for (and in Indiana have succeeded in) defunding Planned Parenthood on the grounds that, while it is already illegal for them to receive government money to pay for abortions, money they receive for other services might help maintain the organization's ability to offer abortions. This is true.

What has not been noted, and I think this will revolutionize all our current thought on federal funding and taxes, is that whenever a poor woman is not able to receive aid to undergo a medical procedure (a pap smear, breast exam, etc.) from Planned Parenthood, she will have to pay for this procedure from some other source. All former recipients of federal or state aid for healthcare will have less money for other things, such as abortions, but they will also have less money for purchasing legal firearms.

Can you imagine a poor woman, who has just had to put her Glock in hock in order to pay for a breast exam, now has to walk home late at night unarmed and unprotected? She's an easy victim for a mugging or, worse, a rape! In our zeal to prevent her from getting an abortion, we've just caused her to be raped since she can no longer keep the firearm that would have protected her. We must remember, every dollar the government withholds from women's healthcare, is a dollar women cannot spend on firearms. Without that money, women will be easy prey for murderers, philatelists and sexual predators.

I say that Republican social engineering has gone far enough. We must fund women's health, even abortions, in order to keep sacrosanct the individual's right to keep and bear arms.

I know what you're thinking. If we pay for this health care, won't we only be arming poor women? Affluent, primarily white, women will still be able to pay for their health care, abortions and firearms? So, what's there to worry about?

Well, plenty. The heavily armed poor or minority woman is the backbone of poor communities. I've seen the documentary "Big Momma", and I think that preventing such women from packing heat is the worst disservice we can do to those communities. Remember, big handguns make good neighbors. Or dead ones, or something. Government spending for X always frees up money for Y, and so we can never cut spending for any X without cutting money for Y (in this case handguns), and so we can never cut government spending without taking away people's Second Amendment rights.